Get a grip

— Photo by W. Carter

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;        

    Long have I listened to the wailing wind,                    

And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds,                      

    For autumn charms my melancholy mind.                

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:

    The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;       

The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail        

    Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!                  

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,                 

    The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:

They weave a chaplet for the Old Year’s bier,                

    These waiting mourners do not sing for me!             

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,            

    Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;                    

The naked, silent trees have taught me this,—

    The loss of beauty is not always loss!

— “November,’’ by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (1823-1902), a native of Mattapoisett, Mass.